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‘What we’ve got to avoid as a country, because it’s very dangerous in my view, is a sense that we’re setting up one generation against another,’ he said.

Chancellor George Osborne will announce tomorrow where £11.5billion of extra cuts will fall in 2015-16.

CLEGG: 'I'M AN ATROCIOUS COOK... BUT I LIKE EATING GOOD FOOD'

Nick Clegg admitted he is a 'terrible cook' and warned against anyone sampling his efforts in the kitchen.

The Lib Dem leader, who has been mocked for putting on weight since the coalition was formed, said he likes to eat good food - but is unable to produce it himself.

He said: Oh, I’m an appalling cook. I’m an atrocious cook.

'I wouldn’t recommend any of my cooking to anybody, I really wouldn’t.

'I love eating, so I’m a great consumer of good food but I’m a rubbish producer of good food.'

He has insisted that schools will be protected as an ‘investment in our economic future’.

But in an interview with LibDemVoice website, Mr Clegg said the government was failing young people.

‘We’ve got a much bigger issue, which is a generational issue as we all know, which is that the squeeze has fallen harder on the shoulders of the younger generation.

‘That’s why I’ve come to the view that one of the urgent bits of work we need to do both in government and more widely is look at the way in which we support particularly that generation of 16-24 year olds.

‘The education-into-work group… are very poorly served at the moment by a hotchpotch of different and often conflicting government initiatives which are very confusing, a pea-soup of acronyms, and the money is not well spent.

‘One of my top priorities over this summer is to really get to grips with this, because we’re spending hundreds of millions of pounds as a society and we’re not serving them well at all.’

Mr Clegg has seen off an attempt by Education Secretary Michael Gove to cut a £380billion plan to extend free nursery care to the poorest under-2s.

He claims the scheme is needed to ensure youngsters from the 40 per cent least wealthy homes dod not fall behind before they even get to primary school.

Overall, UK young people aged between
15 and 29 expected to spend 2.3 years on average either unemployed or
out of the labour force entirely, OECD figures for 2011 revealed today.

This
is higher than in many other countries including the Netherlands (1.1
years), Iceland (1.2 years), Norway (1.3 years), Australia (1.7 years)
and Germany (1.7 years).

Many
young people will be out of the job market because they have 'given up,
more or less', according to Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s deputy
director for education and skills.

He
warned that the 'biggest challenge' to the UK at this time is to help
those youngsters who do not have decent qualifications and struggle to
find work.

The coalition
parties have clashed over the protection given to universal pensioner
benefits, such as the winter fuel allowance and free TV licences and bus
passes.

David Cameron promised before the election that he would not cut them, but Mr Clegg has refused to sanction further cuts to working age benefits unless handouts for the over-65s are looked at.

‘The idea — and even the Labour Party is now coming round to this view — that you can just say you’re never going to look at that £200bn in the round seems to me to be unrealistic.

He said that the promise not to cut them only covered this parliament until he 2015 election, whereas the spending review period lasts from April 2015 to March 2016.

‘I have been quite outspoken in saying that we can’t just take this off the table.

‘My own view is sometimes that the Conservatives have sometimes got a bit of a tin ear on this. The public want welfare reform, but they want it for the right motives.

‘I don’t actually think that the public, and certainly the people we are in politics to serve, I don’t think they like it if they feel that there is a note of retribution or callousness in our approach to welfare reform.

‘And that’s why I always think it’s very important to demonstrate that welfare reform has a purpose, particularly related to getting people into work.’